The banks had disappeared. Alone on the Halewitz side a fantastic mass of sedge and reeds from time to time loomed out through the grey vapour.
Then from the distance came a short shrill sound, like cracked sleigh-bells. It was ringing for the servants' breakfast at Uhlenfelde. The hour was six.
"What curious customs she must have introduced," he thought, "when she is able to slip out at this hour unnoticed, not once, but day after day."
He drew himself up, yawned, and let the cold water spray over him. Anticipation of the coming interview paralysed his limbs like a load of chains. Then gradually he began to feel brisker. Every stroke of the oars drove the blood quicker through his veins, and the first reflection that this renewed strength produced in him was, "Turn back."
But that would be insane folly. Rather he ought to congratulate himself that this inevitable meeting had been arranged in such a natural manner. There would be no necessity to set foot on Uhlenfelde ground, neither would he have to put Ulrich off with subterfuges, and afterwards he would be free as he was now.
He brought the oars out of the water with all his might, so that behind him gurgling whirlpools of foam dug the stream's depths.
Ulrich's peace; Ulrich's happiness. That was a goal for which he need not be ashamed to strive.
A few minutes later, when he looked round, he saw that the wall of fog behind the keel was split in two by a dark urn-shaped shadow standing up like a tower.
His heart began to beat with violent thumps against his breast. "You are behaving just as if you were still in love with her," he said, trying to laugh at himself.
The boat crunched on to the sand of the landing-place, the only one that the island boasted, the bank of which, half washed away by the encroachments of the stream, rose steeply from the water with nothing to protect it but a tangle of lichen-covered roots.